The practice of consultation between senior managers and employee representatives has a long history in British employment relations yet has often been overshadowed by discussions on collective bargaining. In the last few decades, the importance of consultation has been elevated by two main trends: the decline in trade union membership and the retreat from collective bargaining in the private sector on the one hand, with the result that consultation may be the only form of collective employee voice available; and the programme of legislative support for consultation by the European Union since the 1970s on the other. The book charts the meaning and development of consultation in the twentieth century and explores the justifications for the practice. It shows how EU intervention to promote consultation evolved and changed, paying particular attention to the adoption of the Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) Regulations, which became fully operational in enterprises with 50 or more employees in 2008. Analysing the half-hearted response to EU consultation initiatives by the social partners in Britain, it provides a critical assessment of successive UK governments' handling of the issue. Drawing on the authors' empirical research in twenty-five organizations, the book closely examines the take-up and impact of consultation regulations, and explores the processes involved in effective consultation. Consultation at Work looks at the dynamics of consultation and draws a contrast between 'active' consultation of the type envisaged by the EU, and more limited consultation used as a means of communication. Discussing the UK experience in comparative perspectives, it asks what has to happen for the take-up of consultation to improve and suggests the changes that should be made to the EU Directive and UK ICE Regulations.

Preventable dust explosions continue to occur in industry in spite of significant research and practice efforts worldwide over many years. There is a need for effective understanding of the unique hazards posed by combustible dust. This book describes a number of dust explosion myths - which together cover the main source of dust explosion hazards - the reasons they exist and the corresponding scientific and engineering facts that mitigate these circumstances.

"An Introduction to Dust Explosions" describes the main erroneous beliefs about the origin and propagation of dust explosions. It offers fact-based explanations for their occurrence and the impact of such events and provides a critical guide to managing and mitigating dust explosion risks.
Designed to prevent accidents, injury, loss of life and capital damage An easy-to-read, scientifically rigorous treatment of the facts and fictions of dust explosions for those who need to - or ought to - understand dust explosions, their occurrence and consequencesEnables the management and mitigation of these critical industrial hazards

The strike by Local P-9 against the Hormel Co. in 1985-86 marked a turning point in American labor history. The central role played in the strike by the Austin United Support Group brought the issues of economic justice and community survival to the forefront of the labor movement agenda. In response to isolation from their traditional communities, these women created a vital and successful strike culture that was characterized by cooperation, solidarity, and a variety of institutions to meet the economic, social, and spiritual needs of the 1,500 striking families. This work is important because it shows the strength of the women and their vision of economic justice, how deeply committed they remain to their ideals and their struggle, and how little the passage of time has diminished their anguish. This work is important also as a portrait of a typical midwestern company town where community life is colored strongly by economics.

When contrasted with the miners' dramatic strike victories in 1972 and 1974, the shattering industrial defeat suffered by British miners in 1985 has been seen as evidence of the further weakening of working-class solidarity. Undertaken with complete unity, the strikes of 1972 and 1974 brought the miners substantial material gains, contributed to the downfall of a government, and reinforced the National Union of Mineworkers' position at the core of the British labour movement. In contrast, the strike in Britain in 1984/85 was marked by internal division and by the miners' attempt to resist the pit closure programme of the Thatcher government, and it ended in bitter defeat.

Freedman focuses on investigation of employees by their companies and organizations, delineating the rights and obligations of the employer and the rights and privileges of the employee in the employment relationship. Internal company investigations have in recent years become widespread as companies and corporations seek to ferret out internal problems. Officers and directors as well as employees have been subjected to the internal investigative process. But the content of these internal investigations and the precise procedures utilized by the company or corporation are simply unknown for the obvious reason that no company or corporation wants to publicize the fact of investigation, or wash its dirty linens in public Unless such inside secrets are disclosed in the course of litigation, the author of any text on internal investigations cannot detail the pragmatic substance of the internal investigation. The point is simply that the internal investigation process generally remains confidential until disclosed by the participants.

There are, however, guidelines to the internal investigation that are available, and the author has utilized every known facet of the investigative process to spotlight what the internal investigation is all about. Factors such as the right to privacy; whistleblowing; discrimination based on age, sex, race, national origin, religion, etc.; drug-testing and alcohol-testing; as well as prime causes of discharge or termination of employment are all relevant, and are delineated hereinafter. In most instances, these factors are evidenced by decided cases, thereby establishing precedents and background for the author's conclusions. In view of the increasing amount of litigation in this field, Freedman's treatise will be valuable to bench and bar, and as a guide will be useful to executives in corporations and organizations throughout the private and public sectors.

Bringing the hard-to-quantify aspects of lived experience to analysis, and emphasizing what might be lost in interventions if cultural insights are absent, this book includes case studies from across the Asia and Pacific regions -Bangladesh, Malaysia, New Guinea, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Tuvalu and the Cook Islands. When Culture Impacts Health offers conceptual, methodological and practical insights into understanding and successfully mediating cultural influences to address old and new public health issues including safe water delivery, leprosy, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and body image. It contains useful methodological tools - how to map cultural consensus, measure wealth capital, conduct a cultural economy audit, for example. It provides approaches for discerning between ethnic and racial constructs and for conducting research among indigenous peoples. The book will be indispensible for culture and health researchers in all regions.
Discusses global application of case descriptionsDemonstrates how a cultural approach to health research enriches and informs our understanding of intractable public health problemsCovers methods and measurements applicable to a variety of cultural research approaches as well as actual research resultsCase studies include medical anthropology, cultural epidemiology, cultural history and social medicine perspectives

From operating theatres to trading floors, and from oil platforms to airline cockpits, organizations are engaged in a continuous struggle for safety and control. It has become essential for organizations to identify, understand and learn from close calls and 'near-miss' events quickly, before minor errors and failures can enlarge into catastrophic accidents. This book is about the practical work that transforms moments of risk into sources of resilience. It specifically examines the world of airline flight safety investigators, whose job it is to oversee one of the most technologically advanced, one of the safest, but also one of the least forgiving operational environments that exist: commercial air transport. Drawing on extensive first-hand observations and unique access to major airlines, Close Calls presents a compelling and richly detailed account of the challenges faced by these modern risk managers and the innovative strategies they adopt to analyse risk and improve safety. It is a must-read for all those who seek to understand and improve the oversight, analysis and management of risk and safety in complex organizations.

Lawyer, doctor, scientist--these are the jobs Americans commonly cite when asked to list the most prestigious occupations. The word "professional" today implies expertise, authority, and excellence. To do a job professionally is to do it well. Yet in a society in which knowledge has become a prized asset and an advanced degree the ticket to wealth and power, the rise of professionalism has a darker, more ominous side.
Power in the Highest Degree, one of the most comprehensive studies of professionals ever undertaken, exposes professionalism as a double-edged sword; it illustrates how experts have come to "own" and control knowledge, much like the wealthy control capital, thereby transforming capitalist and socialist society, both for better and for worse. Knowledge long predates money as a source of power and wealth in human society, and professionals are only the most recent in a long succession of powerful knowledge classes that have included shaman, witchdoctors, and the Confucian mandarins who ruled China for over a thousand years.
Drawing on interviews with over 1,000 practicing professionals, the authors show how, by dispensing self-interested and morally colored judgements as scientific truth, modern professionals are consolidating a monopoly over what passes for objective knowledge. Experts discredit the ordinary knowledge of the general public to generate a vast market of dependent clients. The result is a powerful professional class that creates vital new knowledge and life-saving services, but also wields growing influence over a population deeply insecure about its ability to manage private and public affairs without "expert" guidance.
This sweeping study also reveals that more and more experts are abandoning private practice to work for corporations, becoming junior partners in a new "Mandarin capitalism." While often outspoken advocates of a more socially responsible business world, professionals have joined big business to produce one of the most pronounced divisions of mental and manual work in history, creating a new dispossessed majority, the uncredentialed. We learn of an experiment at Polaroid to give machine operators more responsibility which is cancelled when managers and engineers decided that they "just didn't want operators that qualified." The authors argue that, as this new "mandarin" class radically transforms the social order, it helps to reform some of the traditional scourges of the business world, but also poses a new threat to equality in America. To reverse this trend, they propose a post-professional society that de-emphasizes skill hierarchies and substantially democratizes knowledge.
A bold and incisive new work of social criticism, this book provides a fascinating look at the modern professional and provokes Americans to think in a new way about democracy in the age of experts.

Maximizing reader insights into a new movement toward leadership approaches that are collaborated and shared, and which views Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) and performance excellence within the wider examination of leadership relationships and practices, this book argues that these relationships and processes are so central to the establishment of OSH functioning that studying them warrants a broad, cross-disciplinary, multiple method analysis. Exploring the complexity of leadership by the impact that contexts (e.g., national and organizational culture) may have on leaders, this book discusses the related literature, then moves forward to show how a more comprehensive practical approach to Occupational Safety and Health and performance excellence can function on levels pertaining to events, individuals, groups, and organizations. This book proposes that greater clarity in understanding leadership in Occupational Safety and Health and performance excellence can be developed from addressing two fundamental issues. Firstly, how do subunit inputs and processes combine to produce unit-level outcomes and how does leadership affect this process? Secondly, how do the leaders influence the way that individual-level inputs are combined to produce organizational outputs. In these issues, the alternative methodologies that allow precise measurement of organizational outputs in OSH and performance excellence are reviewed. To help readers navigate through the best practices, each chapter contains Question Guidelines, Exercises and Case studies which illustrate the concepts discussed and which serves to highlight the key evidence demonstrating that collaborative leadership can positively affect individual, group, and organizational level outcomes, including organizational OSH and performance excellence.

The sectoral composition of economies is fundamental to the understanding of growth, unemployment and the relative performance of nations. Henri de Groot models the relationship between these four factors from a single theoretical perspective in order to determine the foundations of the wealth of nations. Special issues that are addressed include: * the macroeconomic consequences of outsourcing and downsizing * unemployment and catching-up * the relationship between growth and unemployment in a dual labour market * the relative stagnancy of Europe versus the USA in terms of productivity levels and unemployment * transitional dynamics in two-sector endogenous growth models * the causes of deindustrialization * the role of trade unions and efficiency-wage considerations Growth, Unemployment and Deindustrialization will be of paramount interest to scholars of endogenous growth theory, economic growth and unemployment, labour market economics and industrial organization.

The broad field of employment relations is diverse and complex and is under constant development and reinvention. This Research Handbook discusses fundamental theories and approaches to work and employment relations, and their connection to broader political and societal changes occurring throughout the world. It provides comprehensive coverage of work and employment relations theory and practice. This up-to-date research compendium has drawn together a range of international authors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. There are chapters from labor historians, theoreticians, more mainstream industrial relations scholars, sociologists, organizational psychologists, geographers, policy advisors, economists and lawyers. At the heart of each chapter is the notion that the world of work and employment relations has changed substantially since the halcyon days of IR, throughout the Dunlop Era of the 1950s. However many areas of enquiry remain, and more questions have developed with society and technology. This Handbook reflects this view. As the field of study and practice continues to evolve throughout the twenty-first century - what lessons have we learned from the past and what can we expect in the future? Academics and postgraduate students researching industrial relations, human resource management, employment relations, industrial sociology and sociology of work will find this important resource invaluable.

Bognanno and Coleman offer the most comprehensive, current, and valuable work on arbitrators and their professional practice. The contributors to this volume describe paths of career entry, compensation, demographics, market conditions facing arbitrators, and caseloads. The empirically based findings are drawn from a representative sampling of all the nation's arbitrators and afford a previously unavailable picture. The reader gains important insights into these decisionmakers' backgrounds, career development, arbital experiences, and aspirations.

This work is especially important because many of the arbitrators' characteristics, which are captured and described herein, are seen to be enduring or open only to change over an extended time period. The material, fascinating in its detailed analysis of a vital but surprisingly unstudied profession, presents a rich analysis of an occupation that has played a societal role of major significance from earliest times. A work, accordingly, of widespread interest and value relating to the ever fertile fields of dispute resolution.

How did the alliance between labor and the Democratic Party develop after the First World War? What role does Evansville play in an examination of this alliance? What was the impact of the alliance on U.S politics and society? These are some of the questions that Samuel W. White tackles in his book Fragile Alliances: Labor and Politics in Evansville, Indiana, 1919-1955. Focusing on Evansville, Indiana, as a case study, White challenges traditional assumptions in the field, such as the following: labor has one political voice; labor is monolithic in electoral politics; the New Deal successfully reordered American society and politics. White examines the roles played by political repression, opposition by employers, and anticommunist forces within the community as well as the labor movement in undermining the labor-Democratic Party alliance in Evansville. He contends that by the 1950s, the impact of these forces blunted the potential of the labor movement and the Democratic Party to transform the political system by giving workers and their allies a permanent political space in electoral politics. How did the alliance between labor and the Democratic Party develop after the First World War? What role does Evansville play in an examination of this alliance? What was the impact of the alliance on U.S politics and society? These are some of the questions that White tackles in his book Fragile Alliances: Labor and Politics in Evansville, Indiana, 1919-1955. Focusing on Evansville, Indiana, as a case study, White challenges traditional assumptions in the field, such as the following: labor has one political voice; labor is monolithic in electoral politics; the New Deal successfully reordered American society and politics. White examines the roles played by political repression, opposition by employers, and anticommunist forces within the community as well as the labor movement in undermining the labor-Democratic Party alliance in Evansville. He contends that by the 1950s, the impact of these forces blunted the potential of the labor movement and the Democratic Party to transform the political system by giving workers and their allies a permanent political space in electoral politics. Much of the published literature on labor and politics in the U.S. is focused on national events and organizations that make labor appear as a monolith in electoral politics. White diverges from the national focus of the majority of this literature, instead looking at labor and politics at the local level. While much of the published literature argues that the alliance between labor and the Democratic Party in the 1930s was a formidable force that reordered American society and politics, White shows that in Evansville, the alliance was anything but that. Racked by political repression, opposition by employers, and anticommunist forces within the community and the labor movement itself, the alliance was remarkably fragile and incapable of sustaining the momentum it had established in the 1930s.

Wysong analyzes the nature and extent of the involvement of seven major health and safety professional organizations in the development of the most significant national reform effort in occupational health policy since the OSA Act of 1970: The High Risk Occupational Disease Notification and Prevention Act. The professions have long been a focus of study in sociology; however, this is the first book to examine how the interests and involvement of health professionals' organizations on a national health policy issue are linked to external interests and dynamic contextual factors. By illuminating how professional societies' policy choices are embedded within and shaped by economic and political contexts, Wysong refines prevailing new class interpretations of professionals' interests where policy reforms are concerned. This book should be of particular concern to scholars and researchers involved with medical sociology, the sociology of work, complex organizations, social change, and occupational health policy.

By examining the history of the legal regulation of union actions, this fascinating book offers a new interpretation of American labor-law policy-and its harmful impact on workers today. Arguing that the decline in union membership and bargaining power is linked to rising income inequality, this important book traces the evolution of labor law in America from the first labor-law case in 1806 through the passage of right-to-work legislation in Michigan and Indiana in 2012. In doing so, it shares important insights into economic development, exploring both the nature of work in America and the part the legal system played-and continues to play-in shaping the lives of American workers. The book illustrates the intertwined history of labor law and politics, showing how these forces quashed unions in the 19th century, allowed them to flourish in the mid-20th century, and squelched them again in recent years. Readers will learn about the negative impact of union decline on American workers and how that decline has been influenced by political forces. They will see how the right-to-work and Tea Party movements have combined to prevent union organizing, to the detriment of the middle class. And they will better understand the current failure to reform labor law, despite a consensus that unions can protect workers without damaging market efficiencies. Provides a unique interpretation of labor law from a multidisciplinary perspective that encompasses history, politics, economics, culture, and psychology Considers the role organized labor played in creating the American middle class and what role it might play in the future Shows the adverse consequences of the contemporary right-to-work movement Examines the politicized nature of law in America Offers recommendations for political action to restore union vitality

Economists as well as labor relation and industrial executives are concerned with the influence of technology and union/management behavior in the decline of printing union membership. Technology and Union Survival draws together the influx of technology and union behavior into a unified explanation for the decline of union members in the printing industry. The author presents the first published data series in craft training and relative skilled wates as well as estimates of the competitive labor market for the ITU and GCIU.

Working Class Radicals: The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898-1920 examines the rise and fall of organized socialism in West Virginia through an exploration of the demographics of membership, oral interview material gathered in the 1960s from party members, and the collapse of the party in the wake of the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek coal-mining strike of 1912. The first local branch of the West Virginia Socialist Party was established in Wheeling in 1901 and by 1914 several thousand West Virginians were dues-paying members of local branches. By 1910 local Socialists began to elect candidates to office and in 1912 more than 15,000 West Virginian voters cast their ballots for Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. The progress that West Virginia socialists achieved on the electoral front was a reflection of the party's strategy of increasing class-consciousness by working with existing unions to build the power of the labor movement. The party appealed to a fairly broad cross section of wage earners and its steady growth also owed much to the fact that many members of the middle class were attracted to the cause. Several factors combined to send the party into rapid decline, most importantly deep fissures between class and craft factions of the party and 1915 legislation making third party political participation difficult. Working Class Radicals offers insight into the various internal and external forces that doomed the party and serves as a cautionary tale to contemporary political leaders and organizers.

The internal combustion is widely used as a power source in engineering. As the demands placed upon engines have increased, tribology has come to play an increasingly important role in their development.
This book is a creative combination of intelligent design technology and the tribological design of engines: engine tribology, information science, artificial intelligence, non numerical algorithms, modern design technology and dynamics to propose new methodology and technology for tribological engine design. It not only presents an effective approach to l engine design but also explores a new pattern for research and l design methodology.
. An essential reference for the design of more effective and efficient engines
. Proposes new techniques for tribological engine design
. Combines advanced design technologies with traditional tribological design methods

Written and edited by engineering contractors and industry project/maintenance managers as an easy-to-use guide for other industry professionals, this book identifies important process safety issues in the contractor-client relationship, which are not addressed by other groups and publications. While the issues may arise at any point in the life cycle of a plant, they should be resolved early in the relationship to permit a clearer focus on process safety issues. Topics covered are a general discussion of contractor safety programs; EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contractual bases and work division as they address regulatory PSM issues; subcontractor relationships; and managing contractor-client risks

"Lives in Peril" demonstrates how and why seafarers are a vulnerable group of workers. It argues they are made so by the organisation and structure of their employment; the prioritisation of profit over safety by the actors that engage and control their labour; the limits of enforcement of the regulatory framework that is in place to protect them; and by their weakness as collective actors in relation to capital. The consequences of this vulnerability are seen in data on their occupationally-related morbidity and mortality - evidence that probably only represents a partial picture of the actual extent of the physical, mental and emotional harm resulting from work at sea. This volume's central argument is that this situation is likely to remain broadly unchanged as long as global maritime governance and regulation remains in thrall to the neo-liberal economic and political arguments that drive globalisation, and fails to enforce regulatory standards more robustly.

The auto industry is facing tough competition and severe economic constraints. Their products need to be designed "right the first time" with the right combinations of features that not only satisfy the customers but continually please and delight them by providing increased functionality, comfort, convenience, safety, and craftsmanship. Based on the author's forty plus years of experience as a human factors researcher, engineer, manager, and teacher who has conducted numerous studies and analyses, Ergonomics in the Automotive Design Process covers the entire range of ergonomics issues involved in designing a car or truck and provides evaluation techniques to avoid costly mistakes and assure high customer satisfaction. The book begins with the definitions and goals of ergonomics, historic background, and ergonomics approaches. It covers human characteristics, capabilities, and limitations considered in vehicle design in key areas such as anthropometry, biomechanics, and human information processing. It then examines how the driver and the occupants are positioned in the vehicle space and how package drawings and/or computer-aided design models are created from key vehicle dimensions used in the automobile industry. The author describes design tools used in the industry for occupant packaging, driver vision, and applications of other psychophysical methods. He covers important driver information processing concepts and models and driver error categories to understand key considerations and principles used in designing controls, displays, and their usages, including current issues related to driver workload and driver distractions. The author has included only the topics and materials that he found to be useful in designing car and truck products and concentrated on the ergonomic issues generally discussed in the automotive design studios and product development teams. He distills the information needed to be a member of an automotive product development team and create an ergonomically superior vehicle.